11 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

After Ch. │ │ Hale's Plan

Ch. │ │ Hale's Objection

In this argument the consequent, it will easily be observed, has considerably outstretched the antecedent: of this the learned Judge /author/ was himself sensible: for no sooner has it escaped him, than the inaccuracy /extravagance/ of it striking /extravasation striking/ his eye he sets himself to correct it: "or at least" says he "that power lodged in the King and both Houses were insignificant."

The correction /limitation/ was altogether necessary: a power of repeal, and that in general no otherwise than at the expence of a palpable /manifest/ act of falshood and usurpation - a [...?] power of repeal, under favour of which a power of adulteration, convertible in some cases then into a sort of virtual power of enactment, falls a good way short of a direct power of repeal and enactment combined. Take, for instance at once the most important branch of legislative power, that which acts /has acted/ as a root to every other. By proposed misconstruction it might be in the power of the Lords, in judging /sitting in judgment on the import/ of a revenue-act - it might be in their power, at the expence of their reputation, to defeat the purpose of that act, and so /thus/ render a tax unproductive. But with the most absolute power of judicature, and that exercised with the most corrupt intentions possible, it would never in any such way be in their power to impose a new tax. In what preexisting document, whether of statute law or even of jurisprudential law, with the end of all the frauds which are of the opinion[?] of that sham law, would a House of Lords have found pretences corresponding to the several regulations of detail that were found necessary for the collecting of the Income Tax?